Tuesday, April 17, 2018

CLEOPATRA: Blu-ray (Paramount 1934) Universal Home Video

“…and God said ‘Let there be light!’ It might just as
well have been Cecil B. DeMille of whom it has oft been stated, “D.W. Griffith invented the close-up, but
C.B. invented Hollywood.” Interestingly, DeMille’s legacy in Hollywood
today can be distilled into three words – ‘The Ten Commandments’ which DeMille
made twice, first as a silent in 1923, then again, as that perennially revived
and thoroughly gaudy spectacle in VistaVision in 1956. Curiously, DeMille began
his work in silents as a rather prolific director of contemporary melodramas
and comedies
(not Bible/fiction epics), his foray into the Old/New and Hollywoodized
versions of these biblical Testaments opening up an entirely new sub-genre
during the early days of sound and for which ultimately DeMille’s reputation as
a film pioneer today is best recalled. DeMille might have gone on indefinitely
with the Bible-fiction cycle (lots of material there), except that in 1933 the
long-delayed implementation of the industry’s self-governing Production Code took
effect, thereupon blunting the effectiveness of his deliciously lurid
storytelling. Only a year earlier, DeMille had scored the biggest hit of his
entire career, up to that point, with The
Sign of the Cross (1932) – a picture to feature, among its many tawdry
delights, a lesbian seduction dance, and, the even more titillating exposure of
an obviously naked Claudette Colbert, luxuriating in a bath of ass’s milk.
Yeow!

Far from
tempting fate, the audience or the Code – all of which could be narrowly skirted
around by the inference DeMille had thoroughly researched antiquity first and
was playing true to the amoral attitudes of ye ole Pagan times, DeMille was a
highly virtuous man in his own right; weaned on stories from the Bible and
history, and determined to bring to each, not only authenticity but his own set
of criteria for what he suspected would click with the audience in cinematic
terms. In some ways, DeMille’s remake of
The Ten Commandments truly
discolored his bequest to movie lovers everywhere; those, who only recognize
and associate his name with this static and slightly stodgy box office-breaking
super-colossus. For DeMille could tell a story like no other film maker of his
generation. Had he disembarked the train in Tucson to make The Squawman (1913) we might never have known a Hollywood,
California today. For DeMille and Hollywood would soon become synonymous with
each other. A partnership between DeMille, Jesse L. Lasky and Adolf Zukor led
to the creation of Hollywood’s first movie-making empire; Famous Players, later
to morph into Paramount Studios. And all of this lovable nonsense was, at least
in 1934, to culminate in DeMille’s last hurrah: a bold and classy remake of Cleopatra(first brought to the screen
by William Fox in 1917).

DeMille adored
Claudette Colbert (born Emilie Claudette Chauchoin). Indeed, the
actress was riding high in 1933, having starred in three blockbusters
eventually to take on a life of their own: Cleopatra,
Imitation of Life, and, her
Oscar-winning turn in It Happened One
Night – a picture she had not wanted to make. Only a few seasons before,
Colbert had been mostly agreeable to DeMille’s barking chain of command. Now,
she returned to the director’s side, but with newfound clout and a few
idiosyncratic demands of her own; chiefly, to be photographed only from her
left side – an insistence to create staging complications with the liquidity of
DeMille’s constantly moving camera. Even without Colbert’s ultimatums, Cleopatra was a monumental undertaking;
DeMille, forced to make concessions due to the Code and Colbert, but otherwise
afforded every luxury Paramount could lavish upon it.

DeMille also surrounded
himself with a seasoned troupe of performers, by 1933, something of his
personal stock company. He ruled with an iron hand, usually clutching a riding
crop. That, DeMille’s perfectionism and his affinity for orthopedic boots (in
support of painfully weak ankles), helped to establish the perfect iconography
we associate today with the classic Hollywood director; exacting, tyrannical
and, above all else, driven by an artistry conceived in his own image and
mind’s eye. DeMille’s enthusiasm for Biblical tales bode well with his passion
for gargantuan spectacle; the name - ‘DeMille’ translating into a catch all for
lavish escapism. Although Fox and Theda
Bara had been first to immortalize the Queen of the Nile in their silent classic,
it was DeMille’s sound version that would serve as the template for Joseph L.
Mankeiwicz’ bizarre and lengthy soap opera, costarring Elizabeth Taylor and
Richard Burton in 1963. Casting pop
sensation of her time, Claudette Colbert as his serpentine conquoress was a no
brainer for DeMille. But Colbert, a difficult personality behind the scenes, was
frequently at odds with her director. This friction created genuine sparks of
on-screen chemistry Colbert rechanneled towards her two male costars, Warren
Williams (as Julius Caesar) and Henry Wilcoxon (a handsome and brooding Marc
Antony). With the passage of time, each of these has sadly faded into obscurity
in the collective consciousness. Only the most diehard fans will remember Williams
today as originating the role of Sam Spade in the very first incarnation of The Maltese Falcon (1936’s Satan Met a Lady), or that Wilcoxon, in
addition to being one of the hardest and longest working actors in the biz (his
last film was in 1983, a year before his death), lived long enough to see his
image as a DeMillian fav lampooned in 1980’s crass comedy, Caddy Shack (in which he appeared as a priest, brought to ecclesiastical
epiphany before being rather unceremoniously struck down by lightning).

In Cleopatra, Colbert is the sultry siren
who rules Egypt with authoritarian gusto. She is a clever, diabolical vixen who
revels in pageantry and the seduction of many male suitors to occupy her free
time. But Cleopatra has met her match in Julius Caesar, the ordained ruler of
Rome. Caesar has chosen to form a political alliance with Egypt, hopefully to
bring stability to Cleopatra’s fledgling empire. Indeed, at the cusp of our
story, Cleopatra and her trusted man servant/adviser, Apollodorus (Irving
Pichel) are taken prisoner, abandoned in the desert by their captors, under Pothinos’
(Leonard Mudie) edict. The Queen has other ideas, resurfacing a short while
later in Caesar’s court, much to Pothinos’ chagrin. Caesar is much amused by
Cleopatra’s flirtations. But perhaps the minx has overestimated her sexual allure?
Only after she confronts Caesar at the point of a spear, used to put to death
Pothinos (hiding behind a curtain in her bed chamber) does the Roman monarch
fall completely under her spell. The two become lovers; the affair gradually
made public to Caesar’s devoted wife, Calpurnia (Gertrude Michael) at a house
party where conspirators, Brutus (Arthur Hohl), Casca (Edwin Maxwell) and
Cassius (Ian MacLaren) are already plotting his infamous public murder. Upon the
revelation this horrendous deed has been carried out, Apollodorus hastens Cleopatra’s
retreat to Egypt.

Vowing vengeance
for Caesar’s murder, Roman general Marc Antony arrives as Rome’s emissary in
Egypt, only to discover the Queen full of bitterness and venom. Until Antony
can bring about the execution of all Caesar’s conspirators she will have
nothing to do with a Roman alliance – or at least, so it would seem. Instead,
she toys with Antony’s affections as just another of her many sexual conquests.
To their ever-lasting detriment, these two also become lovers, the
tempestuousness afflicting their affair gradually transformed into carnal passion,
destined to ensnare both in a maelstrom of haunted desire. In his absence, Antony’s
reputation in Rome is debased. Indeed, and despite his valediction to Rome, he
is now viewed as the conquered of this Egyptian harlot, the Roman forum voting
to send another adversary to pick up the crusade. In the final act, Antony dies
by his own hand and, as the newly appointed Emperor Octavian (Ian Keith)
marches on the undefended city of Alexandria, Cleopatra chooses death rather
than suffer the humiliation of becoming a Roman protectorate.

Cleopatraoften gets chastised for its Americanized colloquial
dialogue. In most cases where the ancient world is brought to the screen, I
would sincerely agree. Miraculously, Cleopatraescapes such ridicule for this artistic liberty. To be sure, Shakespeare and Bernard Shaw’s
loftier interpretations of this historical tragedy are equally superb. But DeMille
has wisely pegged their histories as luxuriant stagecraft. By contrast,
DeMille’s pursuit here is to make a movie – an entertaining one no less – to
appeal to the American masses on their own terms, yet without ever talking down
to them. On every level, DeMille succeeds. Reportedly, Claudette Colbert was
deathly afraid of snakes. To this end, she absolutely refused to do Cleopatra’s
penultimate suicide scene with a live asp. To help the actress overcome her
fear, DeMille rented the biggest python he could find from a local zoo,
slinging it across his shoulders and approaching Colbert on the set. The
terrified actress retreated into a corner, whereupon DeMille – keeping a
respectable distance – produced a relatively minuscule snake from his pocket. Colbert was so relieved she immediately seized
the serpent to perform the death scene without further complaint.

In viewing Cleopatratoday, what is even more
remarkable than Roland Anderson and Hans Dreier’s lavish production design,
immeasurably aided by Vicky Williams’ costuming and Victor Milner’s absorbing
‘sin in soft focus’ cinematography, is the picture’s blatant sexiness. Although
DeMille could no longer get away with the bacchanals on display in The Sign of the Cross, he managed still
to bypass many of the edicts outlined in the Production Code, beginning with the
impressive ‘nude’ of a woman
reporting to ‘be’ Cleopatra under the
main title card. Aside: for decades, speculation has arisen whether or not
Colbert modeled for this shot herself. The low angle of the camera, the severe
tilt of the actress’ head, and finally, the softly lit proscenium, further
diffused by smoldering fire and smoke pots, makes it virtually impossible (even
in freeze frame) to know for certain. If it is not Colbert, it remains an
extremely bold and voluptuous opener to the picture nonetheless. Nothing – not
even the orgy aboard Cleopatra’s royal barge, in which Antony is seduced – (as
spectacular as this sequence remains), comes anywhere close to such cinematic
daring. DeMille had one advantage here: the iniquitous behaviors in formally
researched B.C. antiquity ran true to form. In the days before the Code, to
misquote Cole Porter “anything went”
in Hollywood. Afterward, artists needed a damn good reason to circumvent its
precepts. Therefore, aberrant sexuality could be, if not excused, at least
parceled off in controlled flashes of flesh, provided the sinners paid dearly
for their indiscretions in the final reel.

Oddly, in Cleopatra, love-making between the Queen
of the Nile and Caesar is more circumspect than with Antony, a passion lent its
full throttle/open-mouthed tilt. I suspect DeMille was testing the censors here
– like a good orgasm – building gradually, before unleashing his climax. Until
then, Colbert exudes a highly suggestive, playful wantonness, barely concealed in
form-fitted and/or flimsy beaded costumes, a strip of satiny fabric, lazily
strewn to conceal a breast, or the positioning of arms and legs to lend a ‘come
hither’ enticement that is even more suggestive than the act we never get to
see, though surely to follow. In the last analysis, DeMille won the war on Cleopatra, a rather enthralling tableau,
produced right on the edge of Hollywood’s collective loss of creative freedom,
destined to leave most every sexual taboo on the cutting room floor for decades
thereafter. Joseph L. Markiewicz’s Cleopatra
(1963) may be lengthier and more resplendently tricked out in all the gaudiness
its costlier 4-hour plus run time could provide, but DeMille’s far shorter ’34
version still remains the very best adaptation. It covers the same ground but
with an economy of wit and style, easily to outclass all the soapy garishness
that would follow it three decades later.

Well, glory be!
Has Universal Home Video turned another corner in their deep catalog mastering
acumen? For some time now, I have lamented the studio’s decision to cut corners
so severely that they went from creating lavishly appointed Blu-ray booklet ‘collector’s editions’ of some of their
most treasured classics to releasing bare bones discs authored so crudely they
could not even provide us with a main menu or chapter stops. And this, to say
nothing of their willy-nilly ‘farming
out’ of such high-profile titles as ‘Death
Becomes Her’, ‘For Richer or Poorer’
and, ‘The Paper’ in horrendously
authored 1080p offerings, cribbing from digital files at least two decades too
old to keep up with modern expectations. But I digress. For its 75th
anniversary, Cleopatra received a
lavish restoration and clean-up. Alas, then, it was only made available on DVD.
But now we have the Blu-ray. Has it been worth the wait?

In a word – yes!
The higher resolution has produced an image that, while occasionally showing
its age, has nevertheless been sourced directly from archival 35mm elements,
digitally remastered and cleaned-up with noticeable improvements. All of the subtleties
in Victor Milner’s spectacular use of diffusion filters are recaptured here,
arguably for the very first time since the picture’s premiere. Where once we
had to guess at the detail on tap under lower light conditions, the Blu-ray
resolves both the picture’s grain and finer resolution into a finite science,
revealing far more overall image clarity and, with minor exceptions, a lot of
minute detail in background information. There are occasional hints of edge
enhancement, particularly in the opening credits and sporadically scattered
throughout the transfer thereafter. But these appearances are brief and never distract
from the storytelling. Tonality in the grey scale is superb with bang-on
contrast levels.

The DTS 1.0 mono audio has been remastered for impressive
clarity. Extras are all hold-overs from
the aforementioned ‘anniversary’ edition DVD and include a thoughtful audio
commentary from F.X. Feeney as well as three featurettes: one on DeMille,
another on Colbert, and, finally, a Coles Notes exploration of movies pre- and
post the Production Code. None of these featurettes goes beyond the usual
junket puff piece – disappointing, since there is so much good stuff yet to be
unpacked. Bottom line: Universal has spent its money correctly – on Cleopatra’s 1080p remastering. The
results are very impressive and will surely not disappoint. Highly recommended!

About Me

Nick Zegarac is a freelance writer/editor and graphics artist. He holds a Masters in Communications and an Honors B.A in Creative Lit from the University of Windsor.
He is currently a freelance writer and has been a contributing editor for Black Moss Press and is a featured contributor to online's The Subtle Tea. He's also has had two screenplays under consideration in Hollywood.
Last year he finished his first novel and is currently searching for an agent to represent him.
Contact Nick via email at movieman@sympatico.ca